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PurposeCentral to the fit concept is that congruence between individual and environmental attributes leads to improved outcomes. However, when discussing fit, researchers often describe congruence as alignment between distinctive or unique individual and environmental attributes. We suggest that current approaches to examining fit do not adequately account for this assumption of distinctiveness because they fail to consider normative expectations and preferences. As such, we propose an alternative theoretical and methodological approach to conceptualizing and measuring fit. Design/methodology/approachWe introduce the normative theory of fit, outline how researchers can decompose fit into distinctive and normative components and identify areas for future research. FindingsManagement researchers have largely ignored the importance of decomposing fit into distinctive and normative components. This shortcoming necessitates additional research to ensure a more accurate understanding of fit and its relationship with outcomes. Originality/valueWe provide a clarification and critical examination of a pervasive construct in the field of management by introducing the normative theory of fit, identifying areas where researchers can employ this theoretical lens and suggesting a reevaluation of the importance placed on differentiation that is traditionally employed in practice. 

Research in personality and organizational psychology has begun to investigate a novel evaluative trait known as perceived normality, defined as an overall perception that one is normal (vs. strange or weird). The current work evaluates a brief measure of this trait (i.e., a “weirdness scale”), extending past work by assessing both self-reports and peer reports of these normality evaluations. Results confirm the measurement equivalence of self- and peer-reports of perceived weirdness, and discriminant validity of self- and peer-reports of perceived weirdness from Big Five traits. A multitrait-multisource analysis further reveals that trait loadings are larger than self-report and peer-report method loadings for the measure of perceived weirdness. Implications for measurement of self-perceptions and social perceptions of weirdness/normality are discussed. 

The Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) and Hogan Developmental Survey (HDS) are among the most widely used and extensively well-validated personality inventories for organizational applications; however, they are rarely used in basic research. We describe the Hogan Personality Content Single-Items (HPCS) inventory, an inventory designed to measure the 74 content subscales of the HPI and HDS via a single-item each. We provide evidence of the reliability and validity of the HPCS, including item-level retest reliability estimates, both self-other agreement and other-other (or observer) agreement, convergent correlations with the corresponding scales from the full HPI/HDS instruments, and analyze how similarly the HPCS and full HPI/HDS instruments relate to other variables. We discuss situations where administering the HPCS may have certain advantages and disadvantages relative to the full HPI and HDS. We also discuss how the current findings contribute to an emerging picture of best practices for the development and use of inventories consisting of single-item scales.